How An Esports Startup Plans To Help Millennials Pursue Their Professional Passion

Darren Heitner
, ContributorI cover the intersection of sports and money.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Image from BlizzCon 2017 at Anaheim Convention Center on November 3, 2017, the site of the Overwatch World Cup 2017 eSports tournament. (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images)

Having a job that pays the bills is not enough for millennials. They largely have an appetite to take a pay cut if it means that they will be satisfied in their occupations. Increasingly, they are choosing to build careers around their passions, which is often somehow related to the digital space.

This new way of planning out a career path -- putting enjoyment and pride above immediate, guaranteed compensation -- is creating an alternative style of the economy around esports, where tech entrepreneurs are building playgrounds for the people who share that love. A convenient reality for those looking to create opportunities in esports is that the industry itself is taking off to the tune of being projected to have revenues at $1.49 billion in 2020.

Built on the premise that people will continue to gravitate toward professions they love and that esports falls within that criteria for many millennials, a company called Dreamteam is promoting itself as the first esports and gaming recruitment and management network. Dreamteam says that there are roughly 250 million players who want to treat esports as a profession and build, grow and manage their teams. But the current marketplace makes it incredibly difficult to accomplish such a goal.

In fact, Dreamteam claims that there should be 50 million esports teams based on the above 250 million players figure, but instead there is only roughly 1 million teams in existence. The cited problems are lack of information on teams, untrustworthy forum threads and Reddit posts and too thinly populated find-a-player websites. Additionally, lack of management tools, no clear path of development and no secure solutions contribute to the void of organization.

Dreamteam, like many startups of today, seeks to solve the aforesaid problems through use of the blockchain and smart contracts. Those devices are purportedly perfectly positioned to assist players in finding, connecting and managing team members and then organizing the structure of the entity.

There is use of tokens based on the Ethereum blockchain platform for use with prizes, payment of player salaries, crowdfunding efforts and donation campaigns.

Additionally, Dreamteam supports a ratings system that helps provide objective values for players, which also assists with team formation and recruitment efforts. The higher the level of the player, the more teams will fight for his or her services.

Ultimately, Dreamteam wants to simplify the process of team formulation in esports, an industry that is very much reliant on team game-play. Its CEO Alexander Kokhanovsky believes the company's existence will lead to hundreds of thousands of new esports teams in the next few years.